


Windmills of the Mind

by Jaywings



Category: Psychonauts
Genre: One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-03-18 13:07:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3570746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaywings/pseuds/Jaywings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short, unrelated one-shots. Characters, tags, and pairings will be added whenever any new ones come up. Currently: An unhappy childhood. Spoilers for Rhombus of Ruin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Dumb Kid Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raz and Lili chat on the roof of the Lodge. (Raz/Lili)

A/N: Hi! I thought I might try starting up one of those one-shot collections, because this section is starved for fanfic and also I need to write Psychonauts fanfic. I also figured it might be good for me to write short, quick things once in a while instead of concentrating so hard on longfics.

* * *

A cool night breeze ruffled the strands of hair that poked out from Raz's cap. He turned his face into it, resting both hands on the rough wooden beam he was sitting on and swinging his legs back and forth in the empty space beneath him. He'd always enjoyed the feeling of being high off the ground. Maybe that was the circus blood in him.

This was one of the highest accessible points in camp. Technically campers weren't  _supposed_  to be up on the roof of the main lodge, but how could he resist when there were literally poles and tightropes leading right up to it? Besides, it wasn't as if he was in any danger. He knew how to fall from high places and not get hurt, even without his levitation bubble.

He braced his legs against the beam and leaned back to gaze up at the sky. It was an inky purplish-black dotted with stars and a jagged crescent moon. Last night the sky had been choked with clouds that resembled tortured faces. He had mentioned this to Agent Cruller, of course; Ford had mused that what he was seeing may have been influenced by his inner turmoil. It had been a crazy night, after all. Still, Raz wasn't sure he believed all that, but maybe there was something to it. There were no clouds at all in the sky now.

_Funny, you never struck me as the silent, sitting-around-brooding-about-things type._

That voice wasn't his. Raz turned around, already knowing exactly who he would see standing on the slanted roof behind him. He raised an eyebrow. "You need to get your thoughts under control, Lili. I can still hear them loud and clear."

"Oh, come on, you know I meant for you to hear that." Lili swatted his shoulder lightly. "This spot taken?"

He scooted over, allowing her to sit down next to him.

"So what are you doing out here?" she asked.

"Silently sitting around and brooding about things. What about you?"

Lili indicated the lodge with a nod. "Everyone's in the TV lounge watching the movie adaptation of the Psychonauts comics. It got pretty crowded in there and I wanted some fresh air."

Raz nudged her. "Oh, is that the only reason you came out?"

"I've seen that movie like five times."

"So…  _that's_  the only reason?"

"Vernon was telling a story about a time he thinks he met one of the extras."

"And…"

" _And_  I was looking for you, brainiac!" Lili elbowed him. "We haven't really gotten a chance to just hang out or anything. So here I am."

Here she was indeed. Raz fell silent, continuing to mindlessly swing his feet back and forth as he trained his eyes on the ground and did his best not to look at the girl sitting next to him. The moonlight turned the edges of her hair silver.

Down by the wooden ramp leading up to the lodge, a skinny cougar paced back and forth. Raz's skin crawled at the sight of it—those cougars could set you on fire before you'd even seen them.

"It's nice out," Lili commented.

"Yeah…" Raz replied, still watching the cougar. "Kinda creepy, though."

"Well, yeah, it gets like that here every night. Especially with those things running around." Lili nodded toward the psi-cougar.

"I don't get why no one tries to do anything about them! The bears, too," Raz grumbled.

They went quiet again. Lili shuffled closer to him, resting against his shoulder. Raz was acutely aware of the side of his hand now brushing against hers and sending shivers through his arm. For a few moments all that could be heard were the chirp of crickets and the occasional sharp cry of the cougar patrolling the ground.

"Is it weird, talking to your dad about stuff now?" Lili asked after a minute.

"It's… different." Raz kept his eyes locked on the cougar. Maybe he should try setting it on fire from up here. Get in some target practice and also give the thing a taste of its own medicine. "Whenever we talked about psychic stuff before, he'd always just shut me down and tell me to practice the trapeze or feed the elephants. I always thought he hated me."

"Well from what you told me, your perception of him was pretty distorted."

"And apparently too bald." Raz let out a dry laugh. "I don't know, Lili. We've been at odds ever since I started showing psychic abilities and now suddenly he's here and accepts everything about me? And I always suspected he was psychic but I never knew for sure, and now…"

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  _And now he's here like there was nothing wrong at all._ "Was it really me the whole time? Was I the one pushing  _him_  away?"

Only once the words were out did he realize he'd said them out loud.

Lili placed a hand on his leg and he cringed. "All that stuff last night…" she said, glancing away, "…that was pretty heavy. I wasn't really sure we'd all make it out of that."

Raz locked his gaze on the cougar again. "Yeah, no kidding."

"You have to know that your dad's proud of you. And you know… if you ever need to talk about stuff like this with someone, I'm here, okay?"

He narrowed his eyes, focusing, and felt his heart give a flip when the end of the cat's tail sparked and started smoking. The cougar yowled and spun around in a circle, spitting, and dashed off in the direction of the lake.

Lili snorted. "Nice one."

"Hey, it was like fifty feet away! That was pretty good for fifty feet!" Raz protested.

"Sure, whatever, you're just avoiding the subject." Lili shifted on the beam, taking her hand off Raz's leg and setting it down next to her again. Something near the ground caught her eye and she turned back to Raz. "Hey, look… fireflies."

He looked. Little dots of light were floating around the lampposts, fading in and out.

"Dad and I used to catch those in the summer when I was little." Lili leaned her head to the side. "Sometimes I'd end up having jars and jars of them sitting in my room at night. We always let them go in the morning. Did you ever do anything like that?"

Raz shrugged. "When I was really little I used to find trinkets and things that people lost or left behind when they left the circus for the day. I'd show them to Dad because I could pick up faint memories and feelings from them, and he always threw them away."

"Maybe he was just putting them in a lost and found or something."

"Yeah, maybe."

Lili turned to face him. "But you never caught fireflies?"

"Not as far as I can remember, no."

She took his hand in hers. "We need to fix that, then!"

Raz looked down at the fireflies doubtfully. "But that's so… childish. Shouldn't we be doing something more important? Like training or something?"

"Boy, would Sasha be proud of you!" Lili said in exasperation. When Raz smiled, she went on to say, "That's not a good thing! Come on, Raz, you can take a break from being Number One camper and go do a dumb kid thing with me."

He let out a puff of air. "Hey, I can be Number One camper and still do dumb kid things."

"Good! So let's go, hero."

"Can we name them after me, at least?"

"Jerk!" Lili let go of his hand, her brow furrowed in a fake scowl. "You can name the ones  _you_  catch. Which might be like, three."

Raz sat up straighter. "That's how many  _you'll_ catch, you mean."

"Are you kidding? I'm gonna get five times more than you, circus-boy. You've never even done this before!"

"That's it, you're on!" Raz jumped off the beam, mentally forming an orange bubble that allowed him to hang in midair and float down to the ground. Lili landed next to him with her own pink bubble.

"Whoever has the most before someone catches us out here wins," Lili said as soon as her feet touched the dirt. "Go!"

Both of them ran to the lamppost, reaching upward and cupping their hands to catch the fireflies bobbing in the air. Raz caught two in his hand before one spread its wings and lifted back into the air.

"Ooh, there goes Raz, Jr.," Lili said. She had a ball of pink mental energy hovering between her hands, inside of which four or five fireflies buzzed around each other.

"You didn't say anything about being allowed to use powers," Raz accused. "That's not very fair… for you. Guess who has all his merit badges?" He formed his own ball of energy, going after fireflies with renewed gusto.

"Sure! Rub it in, why don't you?" Lili said, but her eyes sparkled pink with the reflected light of her energy bubble.

Suddenly it didn't matter who won. Not that it ever had, really.

Maybe he'd even "accidentally" let a few of his fireflies escape to give Lili a better chance.

"I swear if you let me win, I'm dragging you upstairs so you can sit and listen to the rest of Vernon's story," Lili warned, making Raz wonder if she'd managed to break through his mental shields and read his mind.

Nah… she just knew him that well. Better than anyone else he'd ever met.


	2. Isolation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So this is what it's like to be underwater."
> 
> Spoilers for Rhombus of Ruin.

A/N: Once upon a time (like two years ago) I started up one of those one-shot collection fics because I thought it looked like a fun idea and I didn't think it would be too hard to write little spur-of-the-moment ficlets on occasion. Then I only ended up writing one story, making it not so much a collection as like, just one fic. Well, here's another one, and hopefully there'll be more to come.

This takes place during Rhombus of Ruin.

* * *

_Sometimes isolation is a good thing. It can lead to… important discoveries._

For some reason these words—Sasha's message from the beginning of the summer camp session, given as a hint to help him locate the agent's hidden lab—were what ran through Razputin's mind that moment. He was peering through the wide-set eyes of one of the creepy, silent guards running this place, scrutinizing the watery surroundings outside the thick glass window with the full intention of finding a way to hurl his consciousness out into the sea.

Raz wondered if there was any truth to Sasha's words or if they'd been nothing more than a riddle. He certainly  _felt_  isolated right now, and he was about to be even more so. He could only  _hope_  it led to important discoveries.

A fat fish floated lazily past outside the window, its fins and tail flicking just enough to keep it level in the water.

_Aha!_

Raz caught its eye, braced himself only for a second for what he was about to do, and CV'd into its mind—leaving the weird underwater room full of disused dental chairs, the suspended form of Truman Zanotto, and his own immobile body far behind.

And the window covering closed behind him, cutting off any view of the room.

Every fiber in his body recoiled all at once at what he'd just done and his mind went white.

_WATER._

_**EVERYWHERE.** _

He could feel it, cold and heavy all over his borrowed body and he was fully  _submerged_  for the first time in his life and if he was submerged then that meant he was  _drowning_ , didn't it?! He struggled against his bonds but he was stuck in a chair and he was also trapped in a fish and he couldn't move his own body and he couldn't move the  _fish's_  body and he tried to breathe in even though he knew he shouldn't but was he gulping in water or air…?

Panic caused his clairvoyant bond to nearly snap; the invisible "thread" linking his consciousness to his physical form seemed to vibrate with the effort of keeping up the connection and he felt his body stiffen and take rapid, shuddering breaths, his hands tightening into vice-like grips on the armrests of the chair he was strapped to. Terror threatened to claw its way up his chest and he felt a tremendous  _pull,_ tugging him away from the fish and back down to where he belonged—the world darkened around him, and back in the room, his eyelids fluttered as if about to spring open—

Raz  _pulled_  back.

_Calm down_ , he told himself sternly, snapping back into the fish's mind. Down below his body was gritting its teeth.  _Have to… calm down!_

He was caught in an internal tug-of-war, his inherent fear of the deep water battling with his sheer determination to save the others and himself for several seconds before he could form another thought.  _Calm down! I'm not going to drown! I'm okay!_

Perhaps the fish he was inhabiting noticed a terrified foreign entity on the edge of its mind. It paddled in agitated circles, twisting and turning as if confused about which direction it wanted to go.

_C'mon, Raz, look! Just look!_ he thought desperately.  _There's no hand! There's no_ hand!

It was true. The ghostly green form of the Hand of Galochio, usually waiting for him just under the surface of any water that was too deep for him to stand up comfortably, was nowhere to be seen.

_See?! I'm okay._

_I'm okay._

His body let out a long breath and his mind started to clear at last.

_I'm breathing. I'm breathing air. I'm okay._

_I'm not actually underwater._

… _Well, technically I am, but I'm not physically touching the water right now and I'm not going to think about anything else._

Gradually he felt his frantic heartbeat slow and his breathing steadied. The fish calmed down as well, bobbing idly once again.

_I'm literally inside a fish right now. The fish likes it down here. Right? Yeah, I'm okay._

The instinctive terror at finding himself underwater had all but ebbed away at last, and his body started to fall into a more relaxed state of unconsciousness. Or as relaxed as he could be after having woken up after a plane crash, underwater, alone, imprisoned with the person they'd been trying to rescue, and tied to a chair, anyway.

_I've gotten out of worse_ , he assured himself. Now was not the time to get freaked out. He'd wasted enough of their likely precious time doing that already. Since he had no idea what had happened to the others it might be up to him to find them and figure out what to do next.

Feeling as though he'd inadvertently tortured this poor fish for long enough, he spotted another one and darted into its brain instead, and was finally able to take in his surroundings.

_So this is what it's like to be underwater._

It was beautiful. And also creepy.

He'd seen it before, of course, sort of. The bathysphere back at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp had taken him down to the floor of the lake, and there he'd been trapped in an enormous air bubble formed from some kind of mucus. It had been eerie down there—deathly quiet, with gross sea life like giant clams and sucker fish and huge, green-glowing coral formations everywhere. Not to mention there'd been the sprawling remains of the ghost town, Shaky Claim, hidden deep under the greenish water without betraying a trace of its existence to the surface. It was similar here, though instead of a town it was the rusty skeletons of vehicles and aircrafts of all different types and time periods, attached end-to-end in a spiral leading downward to the ocean floor where something large and orange glowed faintly. The heart of the Rhombus of Ruin.

_The Psilerium?_  Raz wondered, gazing down at it. If that's what it was, there was a  _lot_  of it. Maybe just as much as—if not  _more_  than—the amount of Psitanium buried underneath Whispering Rock. He hoped the fish wouldn't swim too close to it. But at the same time, heading down there might be his best chance of finding Sasha, Milla, and Lili.

Oh, and Coach, too.

What had happened to the jet, anyway?  _Did it sink down to the bottom?_ There was no sign of it among the forest of vehicles. It was gone, lost somewhere along the way.

Silence pressed in on all sides with an almost smothering feeling, making him feel oddly separated from the world around him. Strange, wasn't sound supposed to travel faster underwater than in air? Why did everything seem so muffled? He imagined it was very cold down here, too, but the fish didn't feel any of it. He spotted another one a little ways off and jumped into it.

Using clairvoyance on animals was always a strange experience. They saw the world in a completely different way than a human did, and their minds and emotions were simpler, making them in some ways harder to understand. His normal senses, other than sight, were dulled down from either the effects of his clairvoyance, or from the Psilerium, or because that's just how fish were. He could feel the lure of the Psilerium down below, twisting his mind and calling him down to it like it had called the pilots and drivers of all these vehicles now buried down here among the coral, like moths to the flame.

Speaking of that, how were the fish around here affected by the Psilerium, anyway? Back at camp, a lot of animals living around the Psitanium deposits had developed psychic powers. Raz had run across telekinetic bears, pyrokinetic cougars, and rats that exploded into clouds of confusion. These fish seemed completely normal, though. They weren't anything special, they were just… sluggish. They sort of just bobbed in place and didn't swim around much like he assumed fish normally did. There were usually at least a couple lingering around nearby no matter where he went, and Raz hopped easily from mind to mind. Maybe instead of heightening mental activity in animals like the Psitanium did, the Psilerium diminished it.

He CV'd into another fish, suddenly finding himself enclosed inside a beat-up shark cage with the bars torn and bent like it had come under attack by something huge. He hadn't even seen it clearly through the murky, brownish water. Uneasily he jumped into a different fish farther along. How  _had_  all these objects gotten here? Why hadn't the Psychonauts ever confirmed that the rumors surrounding this place were true? Even Sasha had thought they were made up, and Raz had been almost inclined to believe him despite Truman's warning, but now here was evidence to the contrary all around him.

He glanced up. Far above, far out of reach, he could see the surface, the water fading from rusty orange to pale green in color as it got closer to the sun.

He passed through an empty cargo container that may have fallen off a boat and found himself nearer to the Psilerium than before, as well as too-close proximity to way more sharks than he would have preferred.

The Psilerium was shaped like an enormous brain, somehow. And the sharks seemed to be doing the legless, underwater equivalent of pacing around a room in thought or boredom.

_Hope they're not hungry_ , Raz thought warily. He wasn't sure what would happen if his fish was eaten while he was inside its brain. Probably nothing good.

Something familiar softly brushed against his mind. Someone he knew was close by!

On instant alert, Raz cast around for any sign of what he'd just encountered and located an old yellow school bus up ahead. His heart sank. Not a school bus… Hopefully all the kids had gotten out before it ended up here…

He CV'd closer and the presence he'd felt grew stronger, until he could see figures sitting in the bus—more of those weird guards.

_What the…_

Concentrating on the one sitting by the window closest to him, he entered their mind and realized at once that the bus was completely empty of water, and for some reason it was crowded with the guards.

"I need to save the children," a strained but familiar voice said.

Raz gasped at the sight of her in the driver's seat of the bus, desperately holding out her hand in the classic Psychonaut pose and struggling to hold back…  _something_. Something that perhaps she alone could see.

_Milla!_

She didn't respond to his silent call, of course, and in fact she seemed to be in some sort of trance.

But she was alive. Perhaps the others were too.

He had no idea how any of them would make it out of this... but at least now he was no longer alone.


	3. Just Keep Waving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unhappy childhood.
> 
> Spoilers for Rhombus of Ruin.

A/N: Warning for themes of parental abuse and harm to animals.

* * *

He'd never be able to tell you when he first found out that his parents didn't like him.

It seems like something he's always known. One of those things like how the sky is blue, the earth is round, gravity pulls everything to the planet's center, teeth are fascinating—and his parents want nothing to do with him. Maybe it's because of the "teeth" thing.

Odd things seem to happen when they're around him.

One day while he's playing with blocks on the floor, his mother mentions offhandedly that she's freezing cold; well  _that_  won't do, so he imagines her being warm, and the hem of her dress starts smoking. Every evening he knows exactly when to meet his father at the door just before the bell rings, no matter what time the man gets home from work. And as a punishment one time his mother puts one of his favorite stuffed toys on top of the refrigerator—not less than an hour later she returns to see him perched atop the fridge, playing happily with his stuffed manatee with no explanation as to how he had gotten up there other than a blank look and a confused "I jumped."

As soon as he's old enough they send him to a small school nearby. The teacher reports that he is usually a bright, quiet boy, though he has trouble sharing with the other students. He is especially keen to keep his stuffed toys to himself. His parents, who haven't known he's been taking those to school, ban him from doing it any longer, and the next few days he becomes even more withdrawn in class to the point where the teacher calls home again to claim that he never showed up at all.

Trying to explain that it's a mistake does no good. He knows for certain that he's been going to school all week, but his parents conclude that the school must stress him too much and so decide to educate him themselves. Their homeschooling consists of handing him thick medical and scientific journals to study while they go to work, leaving him alone at the house all day.

He hadn't much liked his fellow classmates. But it had been his first time seeing other children his own age. Vaguely he wonders, while flipping slowly through the dull pages of a medical paper on brain surgeries, if he ever will again.

He's always enjoyed keeping animals, and now he relies on them both for company and for entertainment. His parents don't allow any messy animals with fur in the house, but he's sometimes allowed to keep fish, which he enjoys immensely. They're beautiful little things—he particularly likes the bright blue and green ones. But they never last long before he finds them floating belly-up in their tank.

He buries each one outside by the fence, beside a little mossy stone.

One time he tries sneaking in a tiny little turtle. He'd found it at the lake and smuggles it inside in his pocket. It seems that if he listens to it closely he can even hear its thoughts. To him, it sounds like a girl, and so he names it after his mother (the only girl he's familiar with besides the cleaning lady, whose name he doesn't know). It looks cramped inside his old fishbowl and he reasons it needs a bigger body of water, so he sets it down on the floor while he fills up the bathtub. Minutes later he realizes the turtle is gone—there's a sickening  _crunch_  from downstairs, followed by a shriek.

His father storms in and bans him from dragging in any more animals from outside. He takes this a step further and never gets another pet again.

Sometimes he wishes he could play with the children next door. They're a large family, six children that he's seen, and they know he lives here. Sometimes they come over and knock on the windows, beckoning him outside, but his mother disallows it.

"Diseased," his parents call them with a collective shudder, and his mother continues, "Any time I see them they always know exactly what I'm thinking before even  _I_  do. It's  _unnatural_."

The kids eventually stop trying to get him to come and play and the family disappears a few months later. Apparently they've moved away. He hadn't even learned their names.

His parents rarely talk directly to him. They seem… distant, almost afraid of him, though he isn't sure why. They never enforce it, but it's clear they prefer him to stay shut up in his own room, at which point they talk openly to each other about a great many things that they'd never say aloud when he's nearby. He becomes adept at moving silently and unnoticed around the house, finding hiding spots wherever available and eavesdropping just to feel like he's a part of their lives. He remains still and silent while listening in and is never caught once. Sometimes he finds he doesn't even need to hide. He simply sits in what should be plain sight and wills himself to be unseen, and so he is. He can sit right between them and not make a sound and they'll converse as if they aren't bothered by his presence.

It's a couple of years into his toddlerhood before he learns, not that he's able to move things by just thinking about it, because he's known it all his life, but that no one else  _can_. He never sees his parents doing it. When he goes to school, the other children stare at him in awe and ask him to do it again and again, which he does—not just moving things, but conjuring up faint, glowing yellow hands and controlling them. It becomes a neat trick. Occasionally when he meets other kids in the park they edge away from him when he demonstrates it, or else try it themselves and run away crying in frustration when it doesn't work. There are complaints from other parents to his own, who fervently deny that their son has anything to do with such things. It must have been the other child. Eventually, trips to the park become more and more infrequent, and then stop altogether. He asks why. They tell him he's sickly and fresh air will do him more harm than good, and that the other children he'd met will only make him sicker.

He doesn't  _feel_  sick. He wonders if it has to do with the magic hands and decides to never show the trick to his parents.

That doesn't stop him from trying it himself, though. The silverware drawer opens with a rattle. He has to stand on tiptoes to see inside clearly. One by one spoons float out and twirl in the air. He finds, by concentrating on both ends of the spoon as if physically grabbing them with his hands, he can bend it in half right before his eyes.

He is stunned. A metal spoon and he'd bent it like folding paper. The spoon drops to the floor and he mentally grabs another one, trying it again—and again, and again, starting to laugh.

He's forgotten to be quiet. The  _click-clack, click-clack_  of high-heeled footsteps rush to the room and his mother lurches into the doorway, staring at him. Right hand held straight out, left hand hovering at his temple with fingers splayed, a spoon hovering in turn in midair at his eye level.

"My good silverware!" his mother shrieks. "What do you think you're doing to—to—What are you…" She trails off, finally noticing the floating spoon, and she sags weakly against the doorframe. "Cali…? What… what are you doing…?"

His heart is pounding like he's been caught doing something he shouldn't have been. Well, he probably shouldn't be bending the spoons, but wouldn't she think this is neat? She is talking to him!

He tries a smile. "Look, Mother," he says, and concentrates on the spoon again. "Look, look what I can do!"

Before both of their eyes, the spoon slowly bends in half and falls to the ground. He looks up at his mother's face, still trying to smile, hoping for a look of pleasant surprise— _Look what I can do, isn't it neat? Can you do it, too?_

_Demon_.

The word stuns him. It had been his mother's voice, but he hasn't seen her mouth move.

_He can't. He can't be this. This isn't right. It's not possible, it's not natural!_

He draws backwards, his back banging into the open silverware drawer. The tone of her non-voice is something he hasn't heard from her before. She'd been dismissive, yes; irritated, yes; but this? Is it anger? Fear? Both?

"Mom…?" his voice shakes.  _Don't be angry with me, I'm sorry! What did I do?_ He looks down at the ruined spoons, eyes wide. "Maybe I can bend them back?"

"Don't touch them!" his mother snaps. He whips his head up to look at her. Her face is bone white; at his gaze, her cheeks flush and her eyes narrow. She is mad at him. However, her voice changes from a shriek to something low and steady, struggling to remain calm. "Go to your room. Now. And stay there."

He doesn't need telling twice. Hands shaking, he leaves the counter and edges around her, watching her the whole time. She stares at him but doesn't meet his eyes, then turns to look back at the spoons.

_Not possible. Not possible. I didn't think it was real. How do I explain this? When I tell his father—_

It's that voice again, the voice he can hear but can't, emanating from his mother in waves. He claps his hands to his ears but can't shut it off, because it isn't in his ears, it's in his  _head_ , and he's never experienced anything like this before—

He rushes up the stairs into his room and slams the door closed, leaning against it and panting.

_I knew it, I shouldn't have showed her, I should've kept it secret, she hates me now, they both hate me, I messed up all the spoons, I messed up my toys…_

Are those his own thoughts? His own voice? How can he tell? How did he know what his mother was thinking?

His father will be coming home soon, he knows, he's coming home early today— _how_  does he know that? Why does he know?

He has to know what they're saying. He has to find out what they want, what they'd never tell him themselves.

* * *

They don't talk to him anymore. They talk  _about_  him, when they don't think he can hear. But he can, always, whether they're saying things out loud or not. They don't like his way of making things float by just thinking about it, or being able to start fires the same way. He quickly stops showing off those things. They don't want to see it. He never,  _ever_  tells them about being able to hear thoughts. If that's really what it is. If there's one thing he knows, it's that people shouldn't be able to do that. But it seems that somehow they can just tell, and he remembers what they thought about the neighbors before they all disappeared.

From overheard conversations he learns that he's to be sent away to the hospital. Something about a "procedure," but he doesn't know what that word means. All he knows is that it's all because of the spoons.

His parents are scared of him. Parents shouldn't be scared of their kids.

He's scared of  _them_ , too, but mostly he's scared of himself.

Whatever a procedure is, maybe it'll end this.


End file.
